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anonymous 21 April 2005

Hey all,

Great site, very informative.

Just a quick question (probably a silly one too =p)

Cost aside, would it be better to build a DAW with say 2 Opteron 244's (1.8 Ghz) or a single P4 3 ghz S775 ?

Comments

Guest Thu, 04/21/2005 - 07:04

dual processing will always allow for more overhead, opteron or Xeon, over a single processor.

the 1.8 opteron is as fast as a 3G proessor.
better memory performance, true 64bit support on the AMD.

that said do you really need a dual system for many people its overkill, but will allow for growth.

Scott
ADK

anonymous Thu, 04/21/2005 - 16:30

I have built a few DAW. You have to ask yourself a few questions

The most important question. How much noise are you willing to live with? Is the computer going to be in another room or is it going to be under your desk?

Fans are your bigest noise source. The more heat you generate the more fans you need. In general the ADM processors run cooler then the Intel. But in any case each processor will need a fan. Dual processor means 2 fans. Plus I have not seen a dual CPU motherboard that had a passively cooled bridge. You will also need a bigger power supply to power the dual CPU's.

Second question. How much processing will you need? Tracking does not use much it the way of CPU. In general the number of tracks you can record is limited by your harddrives not by your processor. Even in mixdown, if you are not doing a lot of realtime processing, you don't use a lot of CPU. It is only when you start using a lot of nice reverbs and channel EQ that you start sucking up the CPU cycles.

Third Question, what software and operating system are you going to be using? Not all DAW software can take advantage of dual processors. And Windows does not have a 64bit OS yet.

Big_D Thu, 04/21/2005 - 18:40

Unless you intend to do some seriously heavy work, dual CPU's would be overkill and expensive. As was also stated not all DAW software can take advantage of Dual CPU's, actually most don't so that would limit your software choices if you want to use both CPU's. I'd say stick with a single processor unless your needs dictate otherwise.

anonymous Fri, 04/22/2005 - 04:15

Wow,

Thanks for all the replies. It's really good to get input from different sources.

Well, the plan for my DAW is for it to be rack mounted along with my DM-5 drum module. I'll most likely be using it to track drums via midi and for mixing full songs upwards of 8 tracks. Ill be using Sonar 4 PE primarily and I just picked up Drumkit from hell 2.

As far a cost is concerned, I'm not too worried about it. I will most likely be buying my comupter piece by piece and using what I have from my existing computer for the time being.

Right now I'm using an XP 1800+ with 1gig DDR and an SBLive Platinum and the poor thing cries when I try to use DKFH 2 in standalone mode to play drums.

This is what im currently planning for my DAW:

-Intel Pentium4 630 3.0GHz 2MB/800FSB EM64T S775 Processor
-MSI 925XE Neo Platinum S775 PCIe Mainboard
-2x Kingston ValueRam 1GB PC4300 DDR2 Memory
-Maxtor 160GB 7200RPM SATA HDD
-Maxtor 60GB 7200RPM IDE HDD (already own)
-Vantec Stealth 520 Watt Aluminum ATX Power Supply
-MSI RX300SE-TD 128 PCI-E Video Card
-Soundcard (yet to be determined)

If I go dual processors then it will be 2X AMD Opteron DP Server Model 244 Processor with probably a Tyan Tiger K8W (S2875ANRF) Dual Opteron Mainboard.

Guest Fri, 04/22/2005 - 07:08

sounds like dual is way overkill for you.

for better sampling ability i would go AMD 939 and nforce 3.

as to the dual board you mentioned NO, its junk for audio.
Tyan 2885 or 2895 are the only great choices for dual optis.
MSI Via is ok but lacks in many areas where the tyans dont.

Scott
ADK

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